“To suppose that (because) our Government has been instituted for the benefit of the people it must therefore have the power to do whatever may seem to conduce to the public good is an error into which even honest minds are too apt to fall.” — Andrew JacksonLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Presidential File [LC-USZC4-4563 DLC]

Andrew Jackson, whose
tenure stretched from 1829 to 1837, was our seventh president and an
exceedingly popular one. He, too, reminded Congress frequently in Jeffersonian
terms what the federal role was. In his fourth annual message on Dec. 4, 1832,
he wrote:

"Limited to a general superintending power to
maintain peace at home and abroad, and to prescribe laws on a few subjects of
general interest not calculated to restrict human liberty, but to enforce human
rights, this government will find its strength and its glory in the faithful
discharge of these plain and simple duties."

In his second Inaugural
Address three months later, Jackson again underscored the federal government's
limited mission. He said:

"(I)t will be my aim to inculcate by my official
acts the necessity of exercising by the General Government those powers only
that are clearly delegated; to encourage simplicity and economy in the
expenditures of the Government; to raise no more money from the people than may
be requisite for these objects, and in a manner that will best promote the
interests of all classes of the community and of all portions of the Union."

As if to head off any
misunderstandings about the role of the federal government, Jackson went on to
say, "To suppose that because our Government has been instituted for the
benefit of the people it must therefore have the power to do what ever may seem
to conduce to the public good is an error into which even honest minds are too
apt to fall."

Compared to giants like
Jefferson, Madison and Jackson, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire is often
thought of as a mere cipher. But he was another in a long string of 19th
century American presidents who had their heads on straight when it came to the
matter of federal poverty assistance. Among his nine vetoes was one in 1854
that nixed a bill to help the mentally ill. Here's what Pierce said:

"It can not be
questioned that if Congress has power to make provision for the indigent insane
... it has the same power to provide for the indigent who are not insane,
and thus to transfer to the Federal Government the charge of all the poor in
all the States. It has the same power to provide hospitals and other local
establishments for the care and cure of every species of human infirmity, and
thus to assume all that duty of either public philanthropy, or public necessity
to the dependent, the orphan, the sick, or the needy which is now discharged by
the States themselves or by corporate institutions or private endowments
existing under the legislation of the States. The whole field of public
beneficence is thrown open to the care and culture of the Federal Government. ...
If Congress may and ought to provide for any one of these objects, it may and
ought to provide for them all."

It is a testament to the lack of federal welfare-style
programs during more than 60 years under our first 13 presidents that Pierce,
our 14th, termed as "novel" the very idea of "providing for the care and
support of all those among the people of the United States who by any form of
calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy."

Meanwhile, the poor of
virtually every other nation on the planet were poor because of what
governments were doing to them, often in the name of doing something for them:
taxing and regulating them into penury; seizing their property and businesses;
persecuting them for their faith; torturing and killing them because they held
views different from those in power; and squandering their resources on
official luxury, mindless warfare and wasteful boondoggles. America was about
government not doing such things to people — and that one fact was, all by itself, a
powerfully effective anti-poverty program.